Chapter 2: Flickers
John POV
The girl looked sad. I only glimpsed her for a moment, but it was all I needed to see the anguish carved into the pretty features. She was trying to get someone's attention, anyone's really, and frantically rocking the sobbing child in her arms. She looked to only be twenty years old. Tragic, really. They were both to young to die. She was the first.
I kept getting odd glimpses, flickers of people, in the streets. I didn't take much notice of it really at first. They just seemed like normal people, and it was hardly of any interest to me. My mind was on other things. It was only during a reunion with a group of old friends, army buddies who had also been invalided home, that I realised that I wasn't seeing the world as everyone else had been seeing it.
There was a red-head at the bar; stunning, curvy, with a smirk like the devil and heels so sharp they should probably be classed as a weapon. My interest had been sparked immediately – after all, she hardly seemed the sort to frequent a pub like the one in which we were spending our evening – and it ad only increased when she noticed me looking and held my gaze. I smiled and one of companions had clapped me on the shoulder,
"Old Three Continents Watson's got his eye on someone, lads! Let's see how he does it. Learn from the master. Who is she?" I had nodded my head towards the bar and the men had all looked, their faces turning to ones of confusion,
"The red-head," I'd said, hoping to clear it up for them.
"Sorry mate, I think she's left." I frowned, looking her straight in the eye,
"No, she's right—" Someone had walked through, blocking my view of her for a second, and she was gone. I swivelled in my seat, trying to spot where she'd gone, and then shrugged into my pint, "I guess so. Pity," I said, scratching my head slightly.
It was, when the others were collecting their coats, that one of the younger lads – I never spoke to him much but he was always around, idolising the older men – had sidled up to me,
"You weren't imagining her, you know. I saw her, too." I laughed it off, clapping him on the back,
"Good to know, I was worried there for a minute."
"None of the others could see her." I tightened my grip slightly on his shoulder, cocking my head slightly,
"Well, I think she'd wondered off by then, and they just didn't get a glimpse—"
"No, you know as well as I do that they were all staring at her directly, but only we could see her." My hand dropped, the tremor running through it slightly,
"Sorry, I don't know what you're—"
"I think you do, Dr Watson. I've been able to see them since I got sent home. We were both near-death experiences, weren't we? We knocked on death's door and only just got away, unlike the others." I cleared my throat, feeling uncomfortable, and I looked to the others for an escape route. None of them were paying attention. They were all checking the score on the TV behind the bar. I don't even know what game was on.
"Yes, I don't see why that's important though." He held something out to me, and I frowned down at the small, white piece of card. "What's this?"
"Just give her a ring. She can help sort you out. My head was all over the place when I got home and when I realised I was seeing ghosts, and she helped get me straight. Don't mention the ghosts though," he said, laughing nervously. "You don't want to get locked up."
"No, no I wouldn't want that," I muttered. Ghosts, he had said.
That's how I ended up in Ella's office. Feeling a bit of a prick, really. Surely he was pulling my leg, but he seemed so damn sincere. I couldn't really just come out and call him a liar. Besides, it had happened a couple more times. People appearing, just for a minute or two, in the corner of my eye, and then disappearing when I tried to look at them properly or make contact. I'd been on the end of more than my fair share of odd looks from strangers who saw me try to talk to thin air, only to change my mind and walk away. In the end, I thought I might go mad if I didn't talk to someone. Without mentioning ghosts of course.
It hadn't helped much. I went a few times, tried to sort myself out, but the feeling of sorting my head out that James had mentioned wasn't happening. I felt uncomfortable talking to someone in such a clinical situation about my deepest thoughts and fears. I couldn't unburden myself. Every single time I left the office feeling as downright depressed as I felt going in, and it didn't help that I was seeing odd shadowy people in my peripheral vision all day everyday.
It was strange. Most of the ghosts seemed to have come to terms with their new lives and seemed to just be going about their daily business on a whole. After that first girl, most of them seemed at peace in limbo. They went to the supermarket to lshop for food they no longer needed but no longer had to worry about being able to afford, they visited their families, they indulged in all the free cinema and theatre that they could – since no ticket attendant could see them to throw them out – and I even glimpsed an old man throwing pieces of bread to a bemused duck. I chuckled slightly seeing the look on a nearby child's face, watching a loaf floating in mid-air and being torn apart by the wind, and I didn't notice the person walking in the other direction at the same time.
Mike Stamford of Bart's Medical School. It had been a short, uncomfortable conversation on the park bench, and I was itching to get away from it. Somehow, however, he managed to rope me into following him and heading back to the old place. He said he had someone he wanted me to meet.
It was only when we were walking back the way he had come from that I saw him flicker ever so slightly.
